Tom's Mad Blog
May 18th, 2014 | Posted in Mailbag
Q: I know you have a full schedule at the drawing board and a family to manage and cherish, but if you had a full day to use to just fill the well, gather inspiration for your art, how would you spend it? A: I’ve always subscribed to the philosophy that the best way to recharge your creative batteries is to do nothing creative at all for a while. My ideal day off is to go nowhere near my studio and completely disconnect from the drawing board. In fact, the less I can even think about work the better. Total escapism by going to the… READ MORE
May 16th, 2014 | Posted in General
I was honored to be the guest this morning on “Friday Hangouts with Carlos and Bob”, a Google hangout program with Carlos Castellanos (Baldo, Drawn by Success) and Bob Ostrom (Bob Ostrom Art, Bob Teaches Art). Here’s some links to the interview on Drawn by Success and YouTube. You can find it on Google+ as well. Here’s the YouTube version: [youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5Jaj-ZQbNRA[/youtube] READ MORE
May 15th, 2014 | Posted in News
Clicky to Embiggen… Last week the New York Post quietly dropped their entire daily comics section, which admittedly was only 7 or 8 comic strips, with no explanation or warning. As the current president of the National Cartoonists Society, I wrote a letter to the Post admonishing them for the action…which according to some reports was a cost-cutting move. Daryl Cagle and the Cagle Cartoons Syndicate asked me to turn my letter into a guest column, which they now have available on their website. Daryl also suggested I do a cartoon to accompany the column. Below is my article. Above is the first editorial cartoon… READ MORE
May 14th, 2014 | Posted in Sketch O'The Week
Continuing our “Game of Thrones” run, here’s a quick study of Rory McCann as Sandor “The Hound” Clegane. READ MORE
May 13th, 2014 | Posted in MAD Magazine
The annual “MAD 20 Dumbest People, Events and Things” lists have been a popular feature since it’s debut in 1998, so naturally MAD decided to try and cash in by collecting the 100 dumbest ones of the century (so far) into one special collector’s edition! I haven’t seen a copy yet but I assume a few of the ones I’ve done over the last 14 years are included… since all mine were the very definition of “dumb”. READ MORE
May 13th, 2014 | Posted in News
Here’s the thing… shouldn’t it actually be spring in order for “SpingCon” to be held here in Minnesota. We are still waiting for %$%#^ spring to arrive around here, but I guess SpringCon goes on regardless. I’ll be at the Minnesota State Fairgrounds grandstand this weekend doing caricature drarwings, selling books, pimping prints and hawking overpriced original MAD artwork. Come by and say hello! READ MORE
May 12th, 2014 | Posted in Monday MADness
For something a little different, this week is a peek behind the scenes of a cover job I did for the now defunct MAD Kids magazine: MAD art director Sam Viviano warned me that a cover job would be a little different, and he was not kidding. Often when doing feature stuff the editors give the artists a lot of leeway to have fun and add something to the proceedings. They are still very specific about certain things and definitely demand changes when needed, but covers are very different. These are highly scrutinized and the process is reviewed at each step much more closely and… READ MORE
May 11th, 2014 | Posted in Mailbag
Q: There are foreign editions of MAD, for instance in Germany. They often translate articles of MAD, but there are also contributions from local artists. Do you have any contact to these foreign artists? Is there something like a meeting of international MAD artist once and a while? A: There are still a number of foreign editions of MAD being published, although not as many as there once was. It’s my understanding that they license the MAD brand and a certain amount of the US edition’s material and then produce their own content using local creators and (presumably) more local topics to make fun of.… READ MORE
